Jump in now or wait?

Herman - no, the reads from the hard drive should be error-free. Its the spooling from memory out to the device that has no error correction.

Steve N.

Steve - Hmm. Thought I had this figured out. Will there be a problem going from pc using usb to DAC1 due to this memory spooling issue?

I still don't get it. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I've been involved with electronics and computers for a long time and this is news to me. Perhaps I don't understand what you mean but it seems to me that if computers generated errors reading from memory and transferring the data nothing would ever work.

I came very close to going for a PC-type source a few months ago, in part b/c I kept hearing that you could get better sound than out of a CD player. But the thought of having to learn a bunch of new technology, load up a bunch of my CDs, etc., etc., knowing all the while that (a) I don't enjoy technology for technology's sake, and (b) something super duper and newer would be no doubt be coming down the pike in a few years anyway, caused me to decide to go "backwards" and try a tube CD player with a good reputation--so I bought an EAR Acute CD player, and am quite liking it. And I'm really thrilled not to be worrying about all this new technology...yet!

Dokosan - no problem with USB. Even though it does not have error correction, if you stay shorter than the max USB cable length of 5 meters, you should be fine.

However, you should be aware that not all computers USB ports behave well with streaming audio. Only certain USB ports on a give computer or laptop will work well and some computers, such as inexpensive Dell laptops are terrible for streaming audio. You cannot get rid of the pops and clicks no matter what you try. I recommend Toshiba laptops.

I use the same USB firmware that the DAC-1 uses for my products and for most cases it works perfectly.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio